Bike Steering stabilizer Test

About a 1/3rd of our 4wd type bush miles are now conducted on bikes as in practise they approximately double the trails we can explore.

But one thing that has slowed mine down is the difficulty of riding in the sand.
Its not that you can't ride in it but riding in it takes a huge amount of concentration and leaves little time to watch the GPS or take in the surroundings which is really our main reason
for exploring.

With a long distance sand ride coming up I decided to invest in a W.E.R. steering damper.

Its sort of like a little one way shock absorber that you weld to the bikes steering head and prevents the handlebars from moving rapidly off line when your front wheel crosses a wheel rut or digs into the sand.

We have recently completed a lot of tests in slippery muddy conditions now that the wet has set in in Victoria and I have to say that this item does appear to live up to the stability claims made apon it.

At one point on the weekend on a walking width trail the end of my bars hit a tree spinning me sideways , my shoulder hit the tree gazing off it (only 5kmh) but instead of the steering going to full lock the bikes stiffness keep me on line just enough to hold it to-gether and recover from a situation I would have expected to go down in.

We then did trials through several muddy bogholes type sections using 3 seperate bikes which included running with and without the damper.
Each rider agreed than the action of the steering damper improved the line of the bike through the mud.

This backed up with earlier results I have experienced using a borrowed bike in the sand has certainly convinced me of the value of this device, patricularly for those getting a little slower in there reactions (me).